VBA Rubberducking

4:01 PM

[rubberduck-vba/Rubberduck] MDoerner commented on issue #3961: Unreachable case inspection does not understand dates

> For reference, by section 2.1 of the VBA specification, a date is an 8-byte IEEE 7541985 floating point number, i.e. a Double, that is interpreted as the (fractional) number of days since(positive)/before(negative) midnight of December 30, 1899.

puzzlepiece87

Apr 6 at 20:01, by puzzlepiece87

@MathieuGuindon Hopefully this cheers you up - another long-term thank you from me for something you discussed long ago that eventually got crossed off my todo list: Thank you for mentioning that you do a lot of data reads from other Excel files via ADO.

@MathieuGuindon Another long-term thank you - I'm implementing your Userform tutorial to make all my existing programs that use them better.

Duga

[rubberduck-vba/Rubberduck] retailcoder commented on issue #3961: Unreachable case inspection does not understand dates

> Seems this is a problem we've already solved in Rubberduck.Parsing.Preprocessing, which evaluates expressions in precompiler directives: github.com/rubberduck-vba/Rubberduck/blob/next/…

puzzlepiece87

This was another thing that was on my todo list of things to review that you told me about.

Mathieu Guindon

@puzzlepiece87 thanks! ...geez, I never got around to put up that demo I promised

@Duga I think we really need to move the Preprocessing stuff into an Expressions namespace or something - we need to reuse that code somehow.

this

@Duga Nice! but this seems to put the date in .NET's Date? Does it compare to the Double?

Agreed RE: move. Sic Vogel. ;-)

Mathieu Guindon

4:09 PM

@this as long as it correctly parses date literals, then TBH I'd much rather do the date ops with .NET's DateTime and TimeSpan types :)

this

It'll be accurate, yes but not sure if it'll match with VBA which uses them like double.

we are supposed to think like VBA does.

IvenBach

@MathieuGuindon You sure like tapping the insect nests with branches.

Mathieu Guindon

@this yeah... we're literally entering interpreter territory here :)

@IvenBach one does not simply call my stuff "anti-pattern" and walk away without a fight!

this

@MathieuGuindon a flask or two plus few blows to the head may be required.

IvenBach

Hadn't noticed it was put on hold.

Mathieu Guindon

4:12 PM

well, I sent it to the close queue when I voted to close

should have been closed must faster than that :/

@IvenBach and yes. next RD News post is exactly about this, and already scheduled to publish at 8PM tonight.

IvenBach

I was near giddy seeing your post about factories. You'll be getting some question from me a bit later today.

Mathieu Guindon

another one is coming up about the builder pattern

this

I do have one, @MathieuGuindon - if for instance, you have 100 classes using this pattern, don't you end up eating up lot of memory for all those predclared instances?

IvenBach

I feel I'm at a point where I can understand and appreciate some of the patterns now.

Mathieu Guindon

@this I write VBA like objects are free, until that's a problem. never has been.

it's just a pointer, so uhm, that's a huge 4 bytes per object?

I can live with 400 bytes of pointers for all these predeclared id's :)

this

4:17 PM

well, it's not just a pointer

I assume the class has to be put into the memory

so it's defintiely more than just 4 bytes.

Mathieu Guindon

yeah, the UDT needs to be allocated for the default instance as well, so that's calculatable

this

I also do not know how it handles instances -- are each instance their own deep copy of the template? Or do they only keep a copy of the module level fields and share the functions?

Mathieu Guindon

I've always presumed a predeclared ID was just an ID that was, well, predeclared

this

I see it as simply another instance.

Mathieu Guindon

IOW doesn't cost more and doesn't behave any differently than any other instance

yeah that

this

4:20 PM

no different than say, Public foo As SomeClass

Mathieu Guindon

^

except it's Public SomeClass As SomeClass :)

this

but with the factory method, we're basically instantiating 100 classes at the first use of each class, then instantiating a 2nd object that we actually use

yeah

Mathieu Guindon

you could always Load and Unload them manually if that gets you nervous..

this

you can load a class module?

I thought that was UF only

Mathieu Guindon

my understanding is that it works with anything with a default instance

this

4:22 PM

hmm. IDK. I will give that a try.

Mathieu Guindon

why implement a set of reserved keywords to deal with Object, and then restrict it to one specific subtype?

oh, hello run-time error 361

this

yeah

that's why I thought it was UF only

I thought I remembered trying it before.

RE: object parameter -- cos we gonna be loose and friendly with everyone.

Mathieu Guindon

hmm well that does change things a bit

this

you know how VBA love dem variant arguments.

so it's more accurate to say that predeclaredid is more akin to Public SomeClass As New SomeClass

Mathieu Guindon

it's actually Object As Object

yeah

this

4:26 PM

I can Set SomeClass = Nothing

but that just resets the preclaredid. I assume it's still there in memory.

Which is why I wondered about how instance are created; whether they only keep their private copy of the fields, or if they are a full deep copy.

If former, then pssh, going to be a long while before memory consumption becomes a problem.

If latter. :\

Mathieu Guindon

> You tried to load or unload an object that isn't a loadable object

so apparently the type must implement some obscure ILoadableWhatever interface

IvenBach

Deck check: Deep copy = everything is copied vs Shallow = pointer is copied (they both point to same thing).

Mathieu Guindon

pretty sure the fields are private copies

this

have to be by definition.

it's the procedures part i'm not 100% sure about.

Mathieu Guindon

each instance gets its own vtable, no?

this

4:30 PM

@IvenBach yes but mind I'm talking a bit loosely here.

wait, shallow copy means you get a new copy that contains only the same data for the public interface. Deep copy means both public and private data are the same.

in both cases, original Is copy should be false since they aren't the same object instances.

Mathieu Guindon

Public Property Get IsDefaultInstance() As Boolean
    IsDefaultInstance = Me Is Class1 ' where Class1 is the default instance
End Property

this

@MathieuGuindon seems logical. And I'd hope that the vtable points to the same set of functions defined by the template.

Mathieu Guindon

that, I wouldn't know

this

that does implies that for a bigger class, the v-table is bigger, and therefore each instance takes more memory.

Mathieu Guindon

learned about vtables' existence in this chatroom

this

4:34 PM

yeah, you have to be a C++ guy to even know about them.

VB people be all "wut"

Mathieu Guindon

lol

this

heck, C# doesn't show it. You have to dig pretty hard to see it.

Mathieu Guindon

^

this

(mind you that's a good thing. We really shouldn't be playing with pointers. They're more dangerous than matches)

Mathieu Guindon

unsafe is one of the most accurately named keywords ever invented

#define herebedragons = unsafe

this

4:37 PM

hmm. should make Visual studio play eerie music and saying "Abandon all hope ye who enter here" whenever the unsafe comes in the window.

and see, that's another thing C# did right. No macros.

IvenBach

@this Then I didn't understand shallow vs deep copying...

Vogel612

@this meh. it's part of the programming paradigms lecture for CS at my Uni

@this "Soi che vos entrata"

mansellan

huzzah - serialization of all the formats worked

this

@IvenBach shallow is basically just this:

Dim original As thing
Dim copy As thing

Set original = New thing

original.property1 = 1
original.property2 = "abc"
original.property3 = #1/1/100#

copy.property1 = original.property1
copy.property2 = original.property2
copy.property3 = original.property3

Debug.Print copy Is Original 'False
Debug.Print copy.property1 = original.property1 'True
Debug.Print copy.property2 = original.property2 'True
Debug.Print copy.property3 = original.property3 'True

mansellan

so, now I need to store 6 arrays in the .dat file. IIUC, some of them can be of arbitrary size (heck, I don't even know what "Format17" is!)

this

4:48 PM

But w/ deep copy, you're not just setting public-facing properties. You are setting the private properties which you normally don't access.

it's not documented, @mansellan?

mansellan

@this not that I could find

Mathieu Guindon

@this surprised?

mansellan

given that they didn't even bother to register the format with a meaningful name, I guess not

duck check - I don't really want to go overboard in designing the .dat file, but I need to be able to split it back down to 6 byte arrays. so I think I'll just store a sizeof(segment) at the first 4 bytes of each segment. That should be ok right?

<aside> it's almost like MS circa 1997 didn't want people loading in custom icons </aside>

Mathieu Guindon

if it works...

mansellan

coolio :-)

IvenBach

4:59 PM

@this I'll try to remember this.

I also read limbioliong.wordpress.com/2011/10/23/… that you linked to but I'm not groking hardly any of it. I'll have to come back to it.

this

@Vogel612 good for your uni. I've read reports where lot of places teach kids only on Java, thinking that pointers are too hard and must be hidden away or nobody'd sign up for the CS.

Vogel612

well we maybe shouldn't teach them about the difference in power between for-computability and while-computability then?

or what a Von-Neumann-Machine is

or how a CPU works

this

@MathieuGuindon I really shouldn't. I was more thinking that it might have been an obscure format that's no longer in use or something like that.

Mathieu Guindon

haven't seen a .dat in quite a while :)

this

@IvenBach In VBA, it's not really possible to do a deep copy because you can't brute-force your way into private fields as you can in .NET with Reflection

@Vogel612 IKR!

Vogel612

5:03 PM

let's not start to get ranty

this

puts away his soapbox

IvenBach

@this My lack of C# usage is preventing me from "getting" the concept fully. Once I do use it with regularity I'm sure it'll become apparent.

this

but for illustration, imagine the thing class had a Private secret As string as a module-level variable.

in the shallow copy, the original's secret wouldn't be copied to the copy

and of course you can't copy1.secret = original.secret

IvenBach

The default value vbNullstring would be its value, that is until something sets it from within the ~~variable~~ class.

this

let's pretend the original has topSecret and copy has vbNullString

so to get the deep copying, you would need to serialize the original

e.g. Public Function Serialize() As String : 'Make XML Of This Class : End Function

IvenBach

5:08 PM

serialize = "store externally for reconstitution at some point?" In-Laymans: it lets you remake the object by writing it's contents out.

WaynePhillipsEA

darn. I have a knack of being late to the interesting discussions

IvenBach

Which discussions are those?

this

then you can have this:

Public Sub Deserialize(XMLData As String)
  Dim xml As someXMLThingy
  xml.Parse(XMLData)
  Me.secret = xml("secret")
  Me.property1 = xml('property1")
  Me.property2 = xml('property2")
  Me.property3 = xml('property3")
End Sub

WaynePhillipsEA

well, anything in-depth tends to get my attention

2

btw, setting a predeclared instance to Nothing, is indeed effective at releasing the object. Only at next access does the object get re-created

this

note that you can now write to the secret and thus copy is now identical to original in all aspects, including the private fields except that copy Is original is still false, of course.

IvenBach

5:11 PM

@this 85%+ sure I conceptually get what his is doing.

this

@WaynePhillipsEA Hmm. So a Public Something As New Something would never actually release the object? I figured it behaved the same way.

WaynePhillipsEA

it behaves exactly the same, at the implementation level

this

k that's kinda of what I expected.

and the memory footprint? Any insight to that?

IvenBach

copy Is original is false because the Is operator is checking the memory location. They are now two separate things in memory.

this

yeah, Iven

WaynePhillipsEA

5:13 PM

every time you read the variable (pointer), it first checks if it is Nothing, and if it is Nothin, instantiates it.

this

so no different from the self-healing object pattern, then....

WaynePhillipsEA

procedures are a one off cost, as are vtables

this

so I'm not wasting any extra cycles. Cool.

WaynePhillipsEA

@IvenBach not when the members are accessed, but when the variable content itself is read

IvenBach

@WaynePhillipsEA Dim foo as new bar: set foo = nothing: debug.print foo.duk leads to instantiation of the variable any time one of its members is accessed?

this

5:14 PM

RE: memory cost -- Ok, that's very good to know. so it's really the module-level fields that that we need to consider for memory consumption.

@IvenBach a easy way to see this is to add a breakpoint to the Class_Initialize event

and observe whenever it gets fired.

it'll get fired on first access but not on subsequent access at least not until it's set to nothing

IvenBach

Checking that right now...

WaynePhillipsEA

@this exactly, and you can think of a class instance as a simple structure/UDT

this

:+1:

WaynePhillipsEA

with the first fields being the vtable pointers

(usually only one, unless you're implementing multiple interfaces)

this

oh you wanna something interesting, Wayne? Have you looked at decimal data type lately?

WaynePhillipsEA

5:18 PM

like in 1999 or something :)

this

LOL. There are 4 different documentations about it and nobody agree on what it is.

Depending where you look, it is claimed to be 2 bytes big, or 12 bytes, 16, 17 bytes.

WaynePhillipsEA

it's 16 bytes IIRC

this

To clarify - the 2 and 17 comes from Jet, IIRC.

WaynePhillipsEA

actually that has to be wrong. it has to fit inside a variant in 32-bit land, which is 16 bytes in total

this

Yeah, that's what I would expect looking at the DECIMAL structure though funnily enough it says it's only 12-bytes big which is sorta true when talking about integer portions. but yeah, nobody agree on what it is.

WaynePhillipsEA

5:20 PM

but 2 bytes for the variant header

this

so it's LOB?

WaynePhillipsEA

yeah it will be 12 bytes. 2 bytes variant header, 2 bytes are reserved, leaving 12 bytes max

I'll find the definition, give me a minute

IvenBach

@WaynePhillipsEA What's the difference in member access vs content being read?

WaynePhillipsEA

member access would be e.g. reading/writing to Variable.Field or Variable.Call(). But even just reading the object pointer value (e.g. with ObjPtr) would cause the object to be instantiated, not just member accesses

IvenBach

:+1: TYVM

WaynePhillipsEA

5:25 PM

This is the definitive doc for decimal: msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/…

It's 12 bytes

this

I am not a c++ expert but I count 16 bytes.

first is a union of 4 bytes, then another 4 bytes (HiLong) and then an union of 8 bytes

only 12 bytes are the "integer" portion.

the remarks in the header is a bit misleading.

WaynePhillipsEA

no... it's USHORT + USHORT + ULONG + ULONGLONG

this

no

USHORT + USHORT + ULONG + ULONGLONG

WaynePhillipsEA

sorry kid knocked me

this

no problem - so thatn's 16 bytes, no?

2 + 2 + 4 + 8

WaynePhillipsEA

5:30 PM

hmm it is, and even the compiler confirms it. sizeof(tagDEC) == 16

So to fit in a variant, they are basically overlapping wReserved with the tagVARIANT vt (type)

this

so the vt doesn't point to a separate 16-byte structure?

interesting.

WaynePhillipsEA

no... see here msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/…

decVal is a union with the overall variant structure

Given that 2 bytes are unused (but reserved), I would say 14 bytes, but padded to 16

this

hmm. so that explains the "14 bytes".

From VBA side:

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/ms221061(v=vs.85).aspx => 12 bytes.
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vba/language-reference-vba/articles/data-type-summary => 14 bytes

From Jet side:
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vba/access-vba/articles/fieldsize-property => 2 bytes
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb208866(v=office.12).aspx => 17 bytes

sad, eh? 4 different documentation and nobody can agree. :p

WaynePhillipsEA

crazy

this

and that 2 bytes? it made me wonder for long time if it's being treated as a LOB.

WaynePhillipsEA

5:36 PM

Jet must be using some quantum compression algorithm to store 28 digit precision within 2 bytes of data

2

this

IKR!

WaynePhillipsEA

You know what that 17 bytes rings a bell somewhere. I bet it's in the Access storage format

FreeMan

@IvenBach you've gone from "duh checks" to "duck checks" to "deck checks"? ;)

this

yeah TBH, those drive me crazy mainly cos they aren't powers of 2

it doesn't really make much sense to create data structure that aren't powers of 2. For database storage format, it might be OK since we wanna to pack every bytes but... it's still weird.

IvenBach

@FreeMan Your will awore of me bitter when #Words...

WaynePhillipsEA

5:53 PM

aha... I've got your 2 bytes

In Access/Jet the field length for decimal is variable, dependent on the Precision that you specify in the table definition

If you specify a precision of 1, you get a 2 byte 'decimal' storage field

The maxiumum field size for the Decimal type in the Access/Jet storage format appears to be 13 though

this

clarify - each record has precision stored in the 1 extra byte?

WaynePhillipsEA

no, the precision is stored at the table level

this

so it's actually 1 byte + 1*n byte, n being # of records?

(assuming precision = 1)

WaynePhillipsEA

the sign will be stored in that additional byte for the 1 precision

28 precision == 13 bytes of storage

this

I see. That kind makes more sense - but from the documentation aboveyou'd never see that it's variable-sized field

WaynePhillipsEA

5:58 PM

so the precision and scale are stored at the table definition level

Not sure on that 17 though

this

they must have been smoking something when writing that one.

WaynePhillipsEA

the default precision of 18, yields a field size of 9

tell me about it

this

ok. very good to know. This makes much more sense that it'd be variable-sized field. Would be wasteful to pad 16 bytes everywhere if you only have a small number with small precision.

WaynePhillipsEA

it has been a long time since I looked at decimal. thanks for the reminder. now lets put it back in the box for another 20 years.

this

Doesn't explain why it's so dang slow, tho.

LOL. Sorry!

Personally I never use decimal. Too problematic. I make do with Currency. Rare that we need more than 4 digits to the right anyway.

WaynePhillipsEA

6:04 PM

well I guess it's probably slow due to the fact it needs to be parsed/extracted into a more consumable number format

this

Hmm. Yeah. That's the bad thing about the variable sized field.

WaynePhillipsEA

if I needed big numbers (bigger than currency), I'd probably reach for a big number library rather than reach out into the unknown with the flaky support of decimal.

it always felt like it was unfinished. probably because it was.

this

and there's the Binary

that way you get a fixed size field and you can parse it whatever you like.

but the bad is that if you do that, you'll be using VBA to do that. Mucho slow than letting the C++ Jet do the parsing.

WaynePhillipsEA

Oh yeah, wasn't that the one that used to be rendered in Unicode in earlier versions of Access? So you'd see chinese/japanese characters in the UI.

this

yeah by default, it'll be rendered as if it was a string.

WaynePhillipsEA

6:12 PM

g2g thanks for the walk down memory lane :)

this

later

IvenBach

@this I don't know how you don't get bogged down in the minute details of stuff.

this

I live for this kind of stuff.

IvenBach

I just wish I could understand it.

this

it's a hockey stick.

IvenBach

6:26 PM

I keep trying but my progress is slow.

this

For a while it'll feel all confused and jumble-mumble but eventually when you have enough "background", everything will click

I promise!

I've been there where I only had lot of fuzzy notions and idea and "sort-of-understand-but-not-grok" for a long time.

IvenBach

I'm trying to get through bytecomb.com/vba-internals-getting-pointers and bytecomb.com/vba-internals-whats-in-a-variable. This is the best shot I've ever had at understanding the info.

Many times I feel like "Another Iven question..." and I'm the author of the questions.

At least my questions are showing improvement.

Hosch250

My Make Fields Readonly refactoring went out in VS 15.7 preview 4! It's even mentioned in the release notes!

9

IvenBach

@Hosch250 publicExposure++

Hosch250

docs.microsoft.com/en-us/visualstudio/releasenotes/…

IvenBach

6:37 PM

@this :click: Just understood IUnknown interface's methods AddRef, Release, and QueryInterface.

Mathieu Guindon

@Hosch250 congrats!

bwahaha so true

commitstrip.com/en/2018/04/24/thats-our-job

5

Hosch250

@MathieuGuindon So true.

puzzlepiece87

@Hosch250 Very nice!!!

Mathieu Guindon

6:53 PM

@Hosch250 is making vanilla VS steal R# features, one at a time.

That wasn't an answer, that was a comment explaining why I'm voting to close this unanswerable question... — Mathieu Guindon 8 secs ago

#damn

puzzlepiece87

@MathieuGuindon Small unrelated aside: In this post, I don't think this statement is strictly true:

> 'we need ScreenUpdating toggled on to do this:
If Not isUpdating Then Application.ScreenUpdating = True

I always turn off ScreenUpdating and don't turn it back on mid-macro, but using the StatusBar still works.

Maybe I'm missing some mechanic that allows me to do that.

Mathieu Guindon

until it doesn't, and when that happens, look at Application.ScreenUpdating

puzzlepiece87

Anyway, very minor point, just letting you know.

Ah, okay. For me when it doesn't update then I need DoEvents, but I'll certainly keep what you said in mind.

Mathieu Guindon

DoEvents is likely overkill there

puzzlepiece87

And obviously you mentioned DoEvents in the same code block.

Mathieu Guindon

6:57 PM

I ...

puzzlepiece87

Most of the time when I use StatusBar it's because I'm in a tight loop.

> 'make sure the update gets displayed (we might be in a tight loop)
DoEvents

Mathieu Guindon

aye

puzzlepiece87

Cool, thanks for letting me know to be on the lookout, I will keep that in mind.

Hosch250

@MathieuGuindon Next up: Initialize From Ctor.

Mathieu Guindon

@Hosch250 YES!!!

that's gotta be the single R# feature I use the most without even realizing it

Hosch250

6:59 PM

Me too.

Mathieu Guindon

until I miss it in VS2015 at work

Hosch250

The only one that I miss.

IvenBach

@MathieuGuindon @SimonForsberg > If it's not a common error, then why would the question have 86 upvotes on Stack Overflow?

Mathieu Guindon

@IvenBach you just spawned a mod!

hi @SimonForsberg!

IvenBach

I'm in for it now.

puzzlepiece87

7:01 PM

@IvenBach That's the joke?

Simon Forsberg

@MathieuGuindon @IvenBach Quack!

IvenBach

Its Simon's comment. I happened to notice it.

Mathieu Guindon

ah, missed it lol

puzzlepiece87

@IvenBach The guy had no idea what to do. Everything he said before looking it up on SO was him bsing. He had no idea how common it was.

Simon Forsberg

@puzzlepiece87 I don't think so, it seems like Mr. Sysadmin don't know the issue at all, so I don't think he knows how common the issue is until he finds it at SO.

puzzlepiece87

7:03 PM

@SimonForsberg Exactly.

Simon Forsberg

@puzzlepiece87 But then why say "That's not a common error"?

puzzlepiece87

@SimonForsberg To delay and give himself time to look up the answer on SO.

Simon Forsberg

@puzzlepiece87 Why not just say "Oh yeah, that error" ?

puzzlepiece87

@SimonForsberg A developer-god (the reputation he's garnering) would need to know the solution to common errors on the spot. He knows the rookie developer doesn't know enough to contradict his "not a common error" statement.

Simon Forsberg

@puzzlepiece87 But one day the rookie dev will find that question on SO himself.

puzzlepiece87

7:05 PM

@SimonForsberg He could say that too but that wouldn't be as funny.

Simon Forsberg

Are over-analysing this?

puzzlepiece87

@SimonForsberg Yes but that's after the reputation has already been cemented :D

Simon Forsberg

Ah, I'm glad I'm not the only one sometimes pressing enter when typing '

this

@SimonForsberg No, y'all aren't analyzing it enough.

Need a thesis, please.

puzzlepiece87

@SimonForsberg The answer to that question with regards to humor is almost always the same :D

Simon Forsberg

7:07 PM

@this Then please help us analyze it.

puzzlepiece87

@SimonForsberg Definitely not, I'm fat fingers for life.

@this I'll get started, how many pages do you need for my defense? :D

Mathieu Guindon

@puzzlepiece87 letter or legal?

puzzlepiece87

The Humor of CommitStrip "That's Our Job" and Faking It in the Workplace - a thesis defense by puzzlepiece87

@MathieuGuindon Whichever fits more words :P

this

does any academic setting take legal papers?

think not. It's been letter AFAIK.

Mathieu Guindon

why can't I just ♪ let it go ♪

Again, VB's Open statement does not involve Notepad in any way. You seem to misunderstand how text files work. Notepad has a "word wrap" option that you likely have ticked; tick it off. If the problem is that a single Line Input statement brings the whole entire file into that variable, then open up your file in Notepad++ (then ditch both Notepad and Wordpad) and identify whether the line breaks are CR+LF or just LF (or just CR?). In either case, you'll need to clarify whether Texto_vetor_1(1) contains the whole file, keeping in mind that Notepad/Wordpad have nothing to do with this. — Mathieu Guindon 1 min ago

this

7:14 PM

@MathieuGuindon because, duty calls:

What do you want me to do? LEAVE? Then they'll keep being wrong!

Mathieu Guindon

yes, exactly, duty calls ...as in dayjob duty :)

IvenBach

@this Arguing on the interwebs is like masturbating with sandpaper. Just don't do it.

Mathieu Guindon

yikes

that would probably make a good tweet :)

IvenBach

Disagreement is fine. Seeking to convince, not so much.

There's a reason I'm not on social media.

Vogel612

that user doesn't understand the difference between file and data ...

or more correctly: the difference betweeen opening an unformatted textfile with a rich-text editor and opening it with a text-editor...

Mathieu Guindon

7:22 PM

and the "word wrap" functionality of Notepad

I suddenly miss the good old "lacks minimal understanding..." close reason

IvenBach

^ Glad I came after that

Mathieu Guindon

811

Q: Can we please have the "Lacks Minimal Understanding" close reason back?

That close reason Yes, I believe it was condescending and somewhat rude. However there is a mass of questions that fall under a crystal clear criteria: They're poorly written. They have formatting issues. They don't show any research attempts. They don't show any attempt at solving the problem...

ah, this one:

31

Q: What do I do when it's clear OP cannot understand the answer?

If this is a duplicate point me in the right direction, and I'll delete it, but all I found was this, the question it's a dupe of, and this one. Those seem related to the 'show me teh codez' questions. This question is about questions where the OP just doesn't have sufficient understanding to com...

discussion

You're not going to change this question once I answer it, are you? — tvanfosson Mar 22 '10 at 15:23

IvenBach

Those would be a bit off putting to newcomers.

Mathieu Guindon

7:41 PM

@IvenBach newcomers that don't understand that SO isn't your own personal debugging service / mentor

IvenBach

A "We're willing to help" faq/section would be good. Having it include "General expectations on your side" or better worded version to make sure they know what's expected.

I miss the bar on that often enough.

Mathieu Guindon

except people don't read

they come to SO, describe what they're trying to do to the best of their abilities, and when that's not good enough to make a question that makes any kind of sense, SO is suddenly the most evil place on Earth, full of power-hungry would-be-mods that take pride in policing the site and shutting down questions for no reason.

IvenBach

Except they're not.

Well some might be, on occasion. But we all have bad days.

mansellan

oblig:

IvenBach

Can't teach those that aren't able to understand what you're presenting to them.

IvenBach

7:59 PM

@this do you have a moment?

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